Champion

I've been wanting to sponsor and develop a tourney for quite some time now, and I always loved the spirit of the Nations Cup or when people get to represent their countries! So I decided to do an open-tourney where the main expectation is for everyone to have fun while still being the highest competitive level possible!
The only thing you ned to sign up is to have one team-mate from the same country!
Tourney will be played on AGE OF EMPIRES 2: WOLOLOKINGDOMS (always most recent version)​

Bracket:
Final stage teams will be seeded according to the original rating taken on 20th Oct. If an advancing team wasn't in the top two seed of a group, they will take the surpassed team original rating. Exceptions will be made if two teams from the same country advance. In order to have a World Cup format where only one team per country is represented in the top 8, they will face each other in Ro16, and play a BO7 instead of a BO5.
Games will be as following (challonge version: https://challonge.com/aoe2worldcup )
Seed 1 vs Seed 16
Seed 8 vs Seed 9
Seed 4 vs Seed 13
Seed 5 vs Seed 12
Seed 2 vs Seed 15
Seed 7 vs Seed 10
Seed 3 vs Seed 14
Seed 6 vs Seed 11

Match Settings:

．Qualification & Group Stage: BO3
Both team need to clarify the home map they want to pick before Game 1 (lower seed pick first)
Game 1: WC_Arabia
Game 2: Game 1 loser's home map
Game 3: Game 1 winner's home map

．Ro16 & Ro8: BO5
Both team need to clarify the home maps they want to pick before Game 1 by the order BABA
Team B is the lower seed, and the first BA is for Game 2~3, the second BA is for Game 4~5
Game 1: WC_Arabia
Game 2: Game 1 loser's home map
Game 3: Game 1 winner's home map
Game 4: Losing team's home map
Game 5: Game 4 loser's home map

．Semi-Finals, Final, Bronze Match, Same Country Match: BO7
Both team need to clarify the home maps you want to pick before Game 1 by the order BABABA
Team B is the lower seed, and the first BA, the second BA, the third BA is for Game 2~3, 4~5, 6~7 respectively.
Game 1: WC_Arabia
Game 2: Game 1 loser's home map
Game 3: Game 1 winner's home map
Game 4: Losing team's home map
Game 5: Another team's home map
Game 6: Losing team's home map
Game 7: Game 6 loser's home map

．Home maps cannot repeat and cannot be WC_Arabia
．It's both team's responsibility to check you are using WC_ version and home maps are in the Map Pool
．Any game played on a wrong version or a wrong map will be asked to replay
．"Hidden Civilizations" must be selected in the room settings
．Choosing "Random" or "Team Random" is not allowed
．A team cannot pick the same civilization twice in the same Match-Up
If Team A pick a wrong civ vs Team B
(either repeat from previous games or both player use same civ in one game)
1. Team A -1 Re. If already use it then Team B +1 Re.
2. Team A re-pick one civ to replace the wrong civ and tell Team B, Team B can change their own pick.
If one team pick wrong civ second time in a series, admin lose for this series would be given.
If both team pick wrong civ in the same game, then just re-pick, nothing happen.

Rules:

．Restarts
In a Best of 5 each team is awarded one restart each.
In a Best of 7 each team is awarded one restart each.
A restart must be requested before minute 4:00 game time (remember that this is shorter than real minutes). When a game is restarted, every player must chose the same civilizations as in the previous attempt. It is also not allowed to swap players.

．Bugged Map Restarts
If a player starts with a stuck villager, his team may decide to restart the game, but this must be said during the before minute 1:00 game time. A restart requested due to a stuck villager does not count as one of the restarts awarded before a series.
A team can request bugged map restarts during the first 4 minutes (game time). A restart requested due to a bugged map does not count as one of the restarts awarded before a series. A map counts as bugged if at least one of the following is true, in case of a standard resource start:
Gold: Less than 4 tiles of a main gold cluster are at least accessible on one side, extra golds are excluded.
Stone: Less than 2 tiles of a stone cluster are at least accessible on one side, extra stones are excluded.
Berries: Less than 4 tiles of a berry cluster are at least accessible on one side.
Animals: Spawned with less than 3 deer or less than 8 sheep or less than 2 boars, or any animal being trapped.

．No TC Start
Before 3:00, no villager fights, no killing enemy sheep, no walling opponent TC.
Before the first TC is built, you are only allowed to build a dock, a mill and one house.
If TC fight happens mistakenly then the game have to be replayed.
If TC fight happens intentionally then Admin Loss of this game will be given.

．Recorded Games
From Ro8 on, all games have to be played in Tournament 1 Lobby under the “Match Stats Only” Rated on Voobly.Admins will upload the recorded games, players don't need to do it by themselves.

§2 - Flags
Use the flag of your representing country during the matches in Voobly. Change It Here

§3 - Graphical Mods
Any graphic changes that only affects the player's Age of Empires II: The Conquerors are allowed.

§4 - Cheating
Cheating is not allowed under any circumstances. Players using any kind of cheat will be disqualified from the event and banned from future events.

§5 - Automatic Agreement & Punishment
All the game settings provided in this post MUST be followed. Not following them may result in penalties and possibly disqualification.

Ro16 Special Rules:

．Scheduling topics will be created in Group Stage Scheduling Forum to keep it secret.
．Both team's first comment in scheduling topic should start with "Hii," (yes, double i).
This is only for making sure you read the rules.
．You are encouraged to schedule on weekdays, so admins can arrange streaming time easier.
．No POV stream, no live casting.
．Play Not Rated, password protected. Password should only be given to admins (Riverplation, Poxo, Lanchi).
．After the series, both team have to email the recorded games to [email protected]
．Players must not share the results of their games until they have been made publicly available and streamed.

Ro16 recorded games will be casted by all official streamers at the same time below:
2 Match-Ups 30th Nov 21 GMT
3 Match-Ups 1st Dec 19:30 GMT
3 Match-Ups 2nd Dec 19:30 GMT

From Ro8 on, all games will be streamed Live.Official streamers who get password from admin, must not give it to any other people.

Players are allowed to do POV stream for free from Ro8, and also need to show The Banner between games.For POV stream, streamers have to put 5:00 stream delay, and disable the sub/donate/bit message speech.

*Rules may be changed/added any time by an admin, but it will be informed in red and comment under this post.
Admins of the Tourney: @ImRiver@Poxo@Lanchi

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The 8 highest Combined (TG+1v1 Rated)/2 will be automatically qualify to the Group Stage (OBS: Only one team per country will be allowed to be seeded as head of a Group). The other 24 Teams will be decided in a previous Qualification Round. With that a total of 32 Teams, will participate in 8 Groups of 4 Teams. We will then have 4 Rounds, where all will play vs all.
The two best teams of each group will then go to the Final Stage, or “Playoffs”.

Criteria to pick two best Team:
1) Series of Matches won
2) Team who won the series vs other tied countries
3) Number of Games won
4) Number of enemy-Home Maps won
5) Highest Seed

Champion

- Edit: During the qualification stage the teams winning the matches must upload the recorded games in a new topic under the recorded game section with the format:
Topic name: QF RX Country Y vs Country Z
Recorded file name: QF RX Country Y vs Country Z game 1/2/3.mgz

Halberdier

．Home Map
Both team need to clarify the home map they want to pick before Game 1
(The lower team on team list pick first)

．Wrong Civilization
If Team A pick a wrong civ vs Team B
(either repeat from previous games or both player use same civ in one game)
1. Team A -1 Re. If already use it then Team B +1 Re.
2. Team A re-pick one civ to replace the wrong civ and tell Team B, Team B can change their pick.
If one team pick wrong civ second time in a series, admin lose for this series would be given.
If both team pick wrong civ in the same game, then just re-pick, nothing happen.

．Recorded Games Uploading
The Winner have to upload the recorded games in a new topic under Recorded Games forum
Title: Group X (flag) (team name) vs (team name) (flag)Check flag code here
File name: Group X (team name) vs (team name).zip
Group X (team name) vs (team name) G1/2/3.mgz